I love snow! I know, soooo many people hate it. But its so beautiful, peaceful, quiet, calming. My favorite is watching those giant flakes float gently to the ground, watching it centers me, brings me peace, and helps me feel grounded. But snow interrupts. It doesn’t matter if you live somewhere that gets a lot or a little, it always disrupts the flow of modern life because we need to move! We need to be places: work, school, the gym, the grocery store, wherever. And snow interrupts the ability to move freely. We are forced to pause and deal with it.
Isn’t that life though? We keep moving, filling our lives with more and more and more until something comes along and forces us to deal with all that we are running from. A friend recently shared a post on instagram that said “Sit with it. instead of drinking it away, smoking it away, sleeping it away, eating it away, or running from it ... sit with it. Healing happens by feeling.” (Original post by @twinflame.connections on Instagram, Jan 23, 2021) This is what snow does, it creates the image of a soft, quiet, pure world that forces us to pause in it. So lets pause together. Take a deep breath, in and out, again slowly.
Embrace this moment to pause.
Let the chaos stop.
Stop numbing yourself for a moment.
Feel it.
Feel it.
Feel it?
The process of feeling and releasing pain is such a brutal and beautiful process. Mental and emotional injury is much like physical injury, when we neglect to have a sprained joint, or broken bone, attended to in a timely fashion the problem gets much worse. But because the physical symptoms of our mental/emo injury, or pain, are easy to deny, we neglect them, self medicate them, try to out run them. Which works for a little while, but eventually later arrives and with it the consequences of our neglected pain. This is why we need snow days to force us to pause, change rhythm, and release. And probably a little bit of why so many people hate them.
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Today, a random Thursday in January, I reopened the calorie counter on my phone for the first time in months. I knew it would be messy. I knew that my numbers would be wrong. And I knew that there was no point in waiting until Monday. I wondered why we play this game of “I’ll start then, and until then I’ll do whatever I want!” What is with this belief of one last hurrah? We tell ourselves that we deserve it, or that we want to enjoy it, or whatever because we are about to do something major in our lives... I call this a big lie. A lie we all enjoy believing at some point. A lie I use often to make me feel better about the state of my life, the disorganization of my eating, the sheer chaos of my weeks... but I survived and therefore I earned a nap... this ice cream... a day in bed to recover.
So right now I’m calling out this lie in myself, I hope you will join me in embracing the truth that what I do is what I always do until I make the conscious choice to change. Or to quote Newton: an object in motion says in motion until it is forced by a bigger object to either stop, or change course. I’m no physicist, but I find Newton’s work quite applicable to the human psyche, we stay our course until interrupted. And if that course is harmful to us the interruption can be brutal.
We know that doing something consistently is what defines us. And maybe this is what makes change so difficult, because it’s not just the making of the change, but it is also the redefining of who we are, while grieving the loss of who we were.
So here we are in mid-January. I can do a quick check of my goals for the month to see how successful I’m being. And I will, but for this moment I’m sitting with who I am. This woman who has gone through so much in her life, who has made so many changes, and who remains frustrated by goals she cannot seem to achieve and I sit with her because she’s in pain and needs presence.
That may read and feel super existential and weird, that’s ok. I hope you are beginning to grasp what self care looks like in this moment: being present with myself. Accepting where I am in this moment and experiencing the feelings I feel.
I receive this gift of care tonight: 5 minutes of breathing deeply while acknowledging my journey, my frustrations, and my pain.
I release these lies and cover these wounds with the balm of truth.
I celebrate the choices I made to care for me today by __________.
The first of the year is a great moment to check your goals, much like a mile marker or intersection, where are you? Are you on the way? Did you complete some goals and are therefore ready for new ones? The first of every month is a also a great time to visit and revisit these questions. So why all the January hype? I suppose it goes back to advertisers trying to make a dollar, which in modern times means hype across social media about a new year and a new me!
Maybe I’m cheap, but I don’t buy it. Humans are not Amazon Prime, a new us doesn’t arrive in 2-4 days! (That was a great meme I saw recently.) The experts say it takes 14 days of consistency to form a habit. This doesn’t magically happen when we wake up. Nor is there some magic energy that propels us to success. We know this. So why do we buy the hype? The Diets. The gym memberships? Dry January? Why? Because it is an easy starting point. And everyone else is, so why not maximize the camaraderie? So here we are, 7 whole days into the new year, how are those goals? How much are you shaming your self for your inability to overhaul your life in 7 days? ... yeah, that’s what I thought.
Let me be clear: guilt and shame do NOT bring successful change. They bring anxiety, frustration, pain, compliance, and more guilt and shame, but not successful change. And there is absolutely nothing about January that will magically change that. So, how can you change how you approach change? Here are my 4 tips!
1. Set SMART goals. Simple, measurable, attainable, reasonable, time sensitive goals. Start small and simple. You didn’t arrive here in one month did you? Ok, so why fix it all in one! Take those big goals and break them down.
2. Good, better, best. When setting reasonable and attainable goals we have to be honest about what is a good enough result, what is a better result, and what is the best result? Attaining a good result is just as worthy of celebration as attaining your best result. Honor and celebrate your success as you go, then you’ll want to create more!
3. Have a shame buddy. You know that person in your life who is brutally honest, they love you enough to call you out? Them! Tell them how you are shaming you for not achieving your goals and let them truth those lies right outta ya! Then celebrate your success and ability to stick out your plans when it gets rough. The hardest part is in your head!
4. “Tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in it.” - Anne of Green Gables. Receive grace my friend. You can only do your best today, and some days feel ruined before they start. That’s ok, do your best and tomorrow make better/different choices. A practice I am still learning to implement is when today goes off the rails, make choices in the evening to set tomorrow up to be better. While being fully present helps one delight in life, it is also wise to look at the bigger picture, what residue remains from yesterday? What does tomorrow hold? What needs to be done now to put today to rest, and prepare me for tomorrow?
January holds no magic. Life won’t be different in February unless you make one consistent choice every day. And you DO have all the magic you need in your self, so set some goals and enjoy the process of achieving them, you amazing achiever you!
Want to be more proactive in your self care? Get your free resource here!
I have been MIA for a couple weeks, not because I got caught up in the busyness of Christmas, but because I broke and to heal I needed to take care of me. This meant I had no capacity to put out a blog, I could barely “adult” if I’m honest. I could jump right past what broke me and on to how self care healed me, but the truth is lack of care caused me to be drained, not processing life, grief, loss, and anxiety caused a backlog that combined with two large curveballs and broke me.
This year has been a great lesson to me in ALL the ways I care for me. From the way that I eat, to how much sleep I get, to spending time with friends, to privately processing in a journal. These daily moments are, over all, more helpful and caring than a periodic spa day! It is so easy to equate self care with little luxuries, but it is the kindness and care we show ourselves each day that makes the greatest impact.
So where did I go wrong? My sleep schedule was the first to go. My diet became more erratic. And I was giving a lot, while not receiving enough. I felt the drain and flailed, grasping at air to try not to crash, but I did crash. And I broke a little in the process.
The thing about breaking is that in the process we end up losing something we didn’t actually need to carry. The self carries so much in life. And it collects stuff we don’t need, the weight of it all adding to our burdens, dragging us down, breaking us. The truth I am reminded of in this process is that there is no healing if we don’t first break. Healing requires us to release that which causes pain. That which burdens. The lies we choose to believe. When we don’t allow ourselves to do this difficult work of letting go of what causes the pain, to put down our burdens, and to let the tough truth dispel the lies, we break.
So now what? The root cause of my breakdown was grief. As I walked through December I took account of my year and was overwhelmed by the dreams that died this year. The goals not achieved. Time with friends sacrificed to pandemic compliance. And the deaths of friends and family. It is easy to shake my fist at 2020 and curse it. But these are the struggles of life, not just a year. After identifying the root and grieving my losses I took the time to restore. There was sleep and good food. There were phone calls to friends who support and encourage. I fed my mind, my soul, and my body while rejecting lies about how lazy I am, what a failure I am, and how could this happen when I know better? But this is the truth of this year, as exceptional as it’s been, so many normal things have happened, and we can’t live on the adrenaline of the exceptional. We MUST make choices to keep routine, feed our selves, and to show how valuable we are by valuing ourselves.
I cannot wait for the adventures of this new year! How about you?
There is a lot of weariness these days. It goes beyond our natural desire to embrace the rhythm of late autumn and get more rest as there is less light, and is continuously effected by the steady stream of everything. Weariness brings to me the desire to be sour about life. It begins subtly, and grows into a negative, bitter root that I must dig out, if I don’t nip it at the start. And then the week of Thanksgiving comes, a week when we are all reminded to an obnoxious level of how fortunate we are and all that we can and should be thankful for. It’s enough to make anyone become even more numb, taking it all the more for granted. It can get comfortably familiar being bitter and numb to the goodness. And when one is comfortable, why change?
This week I’ve been looking beyond thankfulness to contentment. What does it mean to be content? I dug into some of the etymology and it goes make to the Middle Ages when it meant to satisfy a debt. There are different kinds of debts, obviously financial, but we also owe favors, and we owe ourselves a lot of care - if we are honest. And what about satisfaction? Contentment includes satisfaction, how does one feel satisfied when they look around and see... this weird chaos of 2020. I have found three ways to increase contentment: manage expectations, choosing thankfulness, and delighting in the good everywhere we find it!
If managing expectations sounds like the advice you needed before the turkey went in the oven remember that satisfaction starts with you, your personal work, your goals, your desires met and unmet. We all have unrealistic expectations at some point in life! And there are many tools to help gauge the attainability of a goal, such as the SMART Goals acrostic:
Specific - as specific as possible.
Measurable - the achievement can be defined.
Attainable - actually able to work towards and achieve.
Reasonable - practical.
Time based - a deadline that will be met.
While tools like this are often applied in super practical settings like weight loss, a new job or promotion, or whatever tangible task one desires to accomplish, it can also be applied to expectations. Expecting to fall in love in 2020? Well, how are you meeting that expectation? Expecting your mom to behave quite differently than she normally does? While that is specific, you cannot actually attain this goal because you have no control over her behavior, only your own. The more I set my goals for contentment and satisfaction on my own shoulders, my own behaviors, that which I do have control over, the more content I become. The more I set my expectations of others in line with how they behave around me, the less frustrated I am because I expect it, plan for it, and know to speak to it.
Behind behaviors are attitudes and personal stories. A current popular phrase is “speaking MY truth.” So here is some universal truth that influences your personal truth: your thinking influences your attitude, and you can choose the thoughts that you want to entertain, and which ones to let go of! Your thoughts impact your truth. You can change your mind, it is ok. You can choose to be thankful while sick. You can choose to be thankful when you don’t know how the bills will get paid this month. You can choose to the thankful when you don’t know where your food is coming from. You can choose to be thankful when it seems like everyone you know hates you. You can choose because you can. It all sits on what you focus on. I am thankful for the ability to work through difficult situations, I’ve learned that again this year. I am thankful for what I do have, and therefore use it more wisely, and show it more care. Out of thankfulness comes new perspective, new behaviors, new desires, a new understanding of truth.
Alongside choosing thankfulness is delighting in the good! We don’t celebrate our successes enough! Often I don’t identify them, or feel obligated to play them down in a veil of false modesty. Lately the Fatboy Slim song “Praise You” has been stuck in my head:
We’ve come a long, long way together,
Through the hard times and the good.
I have to celebrate you baby,
I have to praise you like I should.
Sometimes our celebration seems menial: I got 8 hours of sleep!
Sometimes our celebration is significant: I got the promotion!
Sometimes it is simply pausing throughout the day to acknowledge the good in the day: a kindness; a friend; coffee; something beautiful; something delicious; making a tough, but healthy, choice when tempted with an easy, but unhealthy, choice.
This feels weird in our culture because we aren’t supposed to celebrate ourselves, it’s viewed as being prideful, but in actuality delighting in the good, celebrating success small and large, appreciating and finding satisfaction in the daily, isn’t about having an attitude of pride, but an attitude of thankfulness! Seeing our own success and delighting in it means we are encouraged to continue on in success! It is far more productive than judgement and shame, which lock us up with anxiety. So this is your challenge: set your expectations reasonably, choose to be thankful as you walk, and delight in your success as you go. Try it for one day, and tell me below how it goes!
If you are really struggling here, helping folks do this is what I do. Email me below to set up a free consultation on how coaching can help you grow!
